the most open Grand Slam since 1974

The US Open is rightly considered to be the most open Grand Slam, if not the most random. There are reasons for this, which friend Rémi Bourrières had listed last year before an edition promised to Novak Djokovic: placed at the end of the season, he offers himself to bodies and minds already worn out by a year on the circuit . The New York weather at the end of summer is demanding, not to say herculean. And there is a specific madness to the place, to the electricity of New York, to the immensity of the Arthur-Ashe stadium, to the fever of its night sessions, which can make the result more surprising than elsewhere.

Looking back on the game’s recent history, that’s measured by factors like how many players have achieved the only major performance there of their careers: not to mention deposed world number one Daniil Medvedev who has the future before him are Dominic Thiem (2020), Marin Cilic (2014), Juan Martin Del Potro (2009), Andy Roddick (2003), Patrick Rafter (1997, 1998), Bianca Andresscu (2019), Sloane Stephens (2017), Flavia Pennetta (2015), Samantha Stosur (2011), Gabriela Sabatini (1990), who all knew how to provoke some of the most powerful surprises of the season, or in the history of tennis, to force the winners to diversify .

The future also still belongs to the other winner of the 2021 edition, Emma Raducanu. But Flushing Meadows will remain for a long time, with its epic of ten victories without losing a set including qualifications, the scene of the most irrational and unpredictable victory of the Open era (that is to say since the validation of professionalism 1968) .

Moreover, the US Open is the only Grand Slam where Federer and Nadal have never faced each other due to the most lunar defeats of their careers.

In 2022, the US Open craze has hit in even greater proportions. The current edition of the New York tournament is quite simply the most open of the Open era since Roland-Garros 1974 when the serious things of its second week began with the quarter-finals.

Cilic was the last man in the running to win a major

When Carlos Alcaraz finally beat Marin Cilic at 2:23 a.m., hours after Rafael Nadal’s surprise loss to Frances Tiafoe, the 2022 US Open became a golden opportunity for young guns on the men’s circuit. Djokovic banned from American territory, Nadal eliminated on a regular basis, the Croatian was the last player to represent the caste of “Grand Slam winners” after the disappearances of Medvedev (8th final), Andy Murray (beaten in the 3rd round), Dominic Thiem (2nd round) and Stan Wawrinka (1st round).

One of these players will lift the first major trophy of his career (in the very subjective order of players that the small tennis world expects at this level):

Zero former winner at the start of the quarter-finals: this situation had only occurred two other times in the Open era for men:

• US Open 2020
• Wimbledon 2003

Among these references, the US Open 2020 can be considered a “special issue” due to the absence of an audience due to the Covid-19 epidemic – which had not prevented a very New York madness from happen with the disqualification of Novak Djokovic in the round of 16.

Thiem, then world number 3 and the most “expected” player for such a lift, had dominated Alexander Zverev in the final, the man we considered, after his victory at the 2021 Masters, as the best active player not to have cracked the code of a major.

The two men had withdrawn from a “last eight” where these players appeared:

• Medvedev (winner in 2021)
• Denis Shapovalov (seen since in the semi-finals at Wimbledon)
• Rublev (whose glass ceiling is at the Grand Slam quarters)
• Pablo Carreño Busta (winner of his quarter and never seen beyond the semi-finals since)
• Borna Coric (never seen higher since)
• Alex De Minaur (never seen higher since).

Swiatek, the only one to have already won a Grand Slam

To find traces of a situation comparable to that of the US Open 2022 men and women combined, we must go back to the 1974 edition of Roland-Garros. It was, until this US Open 2022, the most open tournament of the Open era. Because the women’s table of Flushing Meadows is also full of players who are impatient to open their prize list.

Iga Swiatek is, mixing men and women, the only player to have won a major trophy in the past (two in this case, Roland-Garros 2020 and 2022) among the eight survivors. This was also the case for the Romanian Ilie Nastase on the men’s side in 1974. This edition of Roland-Garros would soon become a historic edition marked by the first Grand Slam victory for Björn Borg, 18, on the men’s side, and Chris Evert, 19 years old, for women. First trophies of a trajectory that would soon go straight to the legend of the game.

The players likely to prevent Swiatek from diversifying his record are, in the same subjective order as that proposed earlier:

• Cori Gauff
• Our Jabeur
• Aryna Sabalenka
• Karolina Pliskova
• Caroline Garcia
• Jessica Pegula
• Ajla Tomljanovic

The precedents of Roland-Garros 1974 and that of Wimbledon 2003 (for men) teach that the tables wide open do not spit their crowned heads by chance. In London in 2003, a certain Roger Federer had emerged from a table where his rivals were named Andy Roddick, Sjeng Schalken, Tim Henman, Sébastien Grosjean, Mark Philippoussis, Jonas Bjorkman and (yes!) Alexander Popp. It would be the first of Switzerland’s 20 Grand Slam titles, with an all-time record he would be the only one to hold between 2010 and 2020.

Alcaraz and Gauff, the golden opportunity

The glorious uncertainty of sport will do its work in the days to come. But if we arrogated the right to follow our instinct as a chronicler passionate about the history of this game, we would say that this board has a head of historical scenario.

Like at Wimbledon 2003 then. Or like in 1990, when Pete Sampras had dismissed in turn the two great champions of the 1980s, Ivan Lendl and John McEnroe, then his rival of the 1990s, Andre Agassi, to win the first of his majors at 19 years old. before opening a then unprecedented reign at the head of men’s tennis.

If the history of tennis wants to show us that she is in top form, she will crown Carlos Alcaraz on Sunday for the men and Coco Gauff on Saturday for the women. With this “aggravating” or rather sublimating circumstance in the women’s draw: if Gauff, 18, wins her first major in the draw where her great inspiration, Serena Williams, will have said goodbye, the US Open 2022 will be won. instantly and indisputably its legendary edition stripes.